The Milwaukee Brewers are about to have a gaping hole at third base. One Major League Baseball insider projects the team to fill it with perhaps one of the biggest bargains available this winter.
Assuming that Willy Adames departs as a free agent, Joey Ortiz is likely to move to shortstop, creating a vacancy at third base,” Feinsand wrote. “The free-agent options beyond Alex Bregman are mostly underwhelming, but Moncada — who was limited by injuries to only 12 games in 2024 — has shown the ability to produce and could be a great buy-low candidate.”
Moncada, a nine-year MLB veteran, has played mostly third base in his big-league career. He is talented, yet injury-prone. Once considered one of the rising stars in MLB, he provided reliable production in the middle of the White Sox lineup in the latter seasons of the last decade.
Many believed Moncada was on his way to breaking out as a superstar in 2019 when he logged career bests with a .315 batting average, 25 home runs, and 79 RBI.
After a sub-par season in the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign, he turned in a solid yet unspectacular 2021 by hitting .263 with 14 homers and 61 RBI.
However, that’s where the injuries began for Moncada. In 2022, he missed nearly 60 games due to quad, hamstring, foot, and oblique injuries. The next season, he played in just 92 games due to a recurring back issue.
Last season, he played his fewest games (12) since his MLB-debut campaign with the Boston Red Sox in 2016 due to an adductor strain suffered in April.
After hitting 25 round-trippers in 2019, Moncada took the ball deep just 23 times since the end of the 2021 season.
The White Sox declined their $25 million team option to retain Moncada after the World Series ended, making him a free agent.
